Allen & Overy and Trilegal to end referral agreement

Allen & Overy and Trilegal today announced that they have agreed to end their five-year old referral agreement. The original agreement was intended to take advantage of the anticipated liberalisation of the Indian legal market..As the Indian economy continues to grow so has the volume of legal work as more clients seek investment opportunities in India and Indian corporates expand globally. Unfortunately, the lack of progress towards legal sector liberalisation in India, has led both firms to conclude their existing arrangement is restricting their ability fully to exploit the growing opportunities in India..Commenting, Allen & Overy India Group head Jonathan Brayne said: “There is an obvious need to adapt our India strategy to give us, and Trilegal, greater flexibility to both service the needs of our clients and cement our leading market position on India-related work. We have the highest opinion of Trilegal and we look forward to continuing to work with them when the opportunity presents itself, but also to collaborating with other Indian law firms.”.Trilegal senior partner Anand Prasad added: “We believe our relationship with Allen & Overy has been of great benefit to both firms. But both sides agree that, in the absence of liberalisation, each firm stands a better chance of increasing its market share by broadening our options for collaboration in the market”..Bar & Bench spoke to Trilegal Partner Anand Prasad and Allen & Overy India Group Head Jonathan Brayne on the decision of the firms to end the referral arrangement..Anand Prasad says, “If you look back when we entered into this relationship with Allen & Overy, it looked as if the liberalisation of the Indian legal market was on the verge of happening. Since then there has always been a talk back and forth, it looked like that the market will open up in 6 months to one year. There was lack of clarity..Today, you can be sure that with this Government, no liberalisation is going to happen. And any new government will atleast take 2-3 years to figure out what is to be done. So, clearly for the next 5 years no liberalisation is happening..In that context both the firms have taken a call to end this model. In these circumstances, it did not make sense for the relationship in the present form to go on..So, it was a pragmatic view in terms of what the two firms actually benefit at this time to change the nature of our relationship”..Anand adds, “Both at the professional level and at a personal level, the bonds between the people in the two firms are very strong. Also, within the partnerships of both Trilegal and Allen & Overy, there is a sad feeling that this had to happen but these are circumstances”..Jonathan Brayne says, “The original impetus for our collaboration was very much that we felt that liberalisation was imminent and we wanted to take advantage of that together and collaborating in whatever way the new rules would provide. But in the absence of this happening anytime soon, we both feel that we are missing out on opportunities I suppose. Though our collaboration is a non-exclusive one and so it has been, is seen by the market as an exclusive one. We see wider opportunities to collaborate with other firms out there...So we had to reluctantly bow to the market pressure. This is something we do regret really. But you have to adapt to market conditions and that’s what we are doing”.